Thank you all for helping make Handmade Holidays so much fun! It really has been wonderful to read your enthusiastic comments and see all the beautiful things you’ve been making. We also want to give a huge thanks to all the brilliant crafters that have allowed us to link to their tutorials. We love you for sharing your creativity and time with us! You have made our holidays so much easier and more meaningful.

We still have many more wonderful tutorials to come this month, but we’d like to tell you about our December plans. We are shifting our focus from gifts to people–namely YOU! We thought it would be fun to start a holiday blog meme about traditions and gift-giving. The idea is that you answer the questions on your own blog, along with photos and relevant links. When it is posted, come back here (to this post) and give us the link in a comment. Throughout the month of December we’ll be highlighting the things that touched us, awed us, made us laugh, or made us green with envy. We’ll be combining these excerpts with some our favorite photos from the Handmade Holidays photo pool into a daily post, Handcrafters’ Highlights.

1. Answer the questions in a post on your blog. Answer them all or only a few. Add photos and links where relevant.

Gifts

Do you have a favorite gift that you love to give?

If you’re making gifts this year, what are you making? (Post photos if you have some!)

Do you have any good stories about handcrafted gifts you’ve given or received?

Do you have any great gift compilation ideas (a grouping of gifts just perfect for certain recipients?)

Name one thing on your personal wish list.

Do you make and sell things that would make fantastic gifts? (Link)

Traditions

What is your favorite family holiday tradition?

Have you started any new traditions with your family that you didn’t practice growing up?

What do you love most about the holiday season?

What do you like least about the holiday season?

Anyone close to your heart that you’ll be missing this year?

What is your favorite holiday food?

Do you have a great recipe to share?

2. Come back to this post and put the link to your post in a comment.

3. This one requires some explanation…It has always been our practice to request permission to use photos, links and blog content. We completely respect your copyright. In this case, because of time constraints, we’d like to request that you let us know if you don’t want us to use your photos, quotes, or links. That is, if you come back here and there is only a link to your meme post in a comment, we will assume that it is okay to use your photos and link back to your post (with full authoriship credit, of course.) If, however, you don’t want us to use any of your content in our December Handrafters’ Highlights posts, please also write in your comment, “OPT-OUT”.

4. Pass on the link to your friends and blog readers!Make sure they know they about coming back here and commenting with a link to their post. It will be fun to have a master list of Handcrafter’ Holidays Meme posts! If you’d like, feel free to use the button.

Please let us know if you have any questions about any of this. We can’t wait to read Handcrafters’ Holidays Blog Meme posts!

Peace,

Kristin, Beth and Lauren

Edited to answer questions:

*******

Julie asked, “do these need to be posted before December 1?”

Oh, no! We wouldn’t make you work that fast. Let’s just say anytime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It would be lovely to have some to start off the month, but really, it is for you, it is supposed to be fun.

*******

Cocoa asked, “Can we only do one post? Or can we do several different posts and link to all of them?”

Do as many as you need. We can see that it could get to be a very long post indeed! Feel free to give us the links to a series of posts.

******

A couple of you mentioned that you can’t post your gifts online and still keep them a surprise, which we certainly understand. You can complete as much or as little of the meme as you want.

Thanks for sharing my Homemade Christmas post a couple of days ago. I had three hundred hits for that post in just one day! I think my mom is now hooked to reading your blog. Well, almost as much as I am. ;D

I tried posting this a few days ago, but I don’t think it “took,” so I’m giving it another go.

I have appreciated all the inspiration others have shared through this holiday meme. Because mine has been a very stressful year, I’ve tried to make this Christmas as low-key as possible while still celebrating the season. I’ve posted my answers to the meme and the giftable projects I’ve attempted on my blog: http://scrapdash.blogspot.com. Thank you for the opportunity.

Your meme questions inspired me to actually finish and post projects — so much fun! My projects are posted in several posts, since I couldn’t figure out how to get it all on one post. And I just answered a couple of questions from the meme — my favorite traditions, and how to make them. Thanks for the opportunity to share!

I have had so much fun reading (and gleaning fabulous ideas) from all of your memes that I decided to post my own. Here is my blog. Thank you for the wealth of information!http://www.troyestadler.blogspot.com

I love all of the wonderful gift ideas and can not wait until after the holidays are over so I can sew up a bunch of things to keep on hand for future gfts! I am so glad that I stumbled across this blog and have bookmarked it for future reference. I did make a bag from the lunch bag tutorials and wanted to share it with you. Here is the link to my blog: http://thesebusyneedles.blogspot.com/ Thanks for doing such a great job with this whole site, especially the thoughtfullness of the handmade holidays theme!

I haven’t done the meme as my December posts in general always seem to speak to the traditions and handmade items we enjoy every year. It’s too late for your November tutorial bonanza, but I thought your readers might enjoy a little last minute crafting with a snowflake fairy tutorial I posted today:

I love that you are doing this. As many others have said, I can’t post pictures yet. But I have posted about my absolute fave tradition. You can find the details here: http://yarnhaven.blogspot.com
I’ll be posting later about some other things, but wanted to get this one posted now.

I’m a relatively new blogger – but after all the inspiration I’ve gotten here the past month (and a little more!) I just wanted to share a little of what I have to offer.http://tlcandmore.blogspot.com/

In my ‘meme’ I talk about chocolate gray – a family tradition. I will post the recipe in a few days if anyone is interested or you can email me. It really is good and I’ve used it for pot luck before with little tiny biscuits like fondue. Don’t knock it til you try it! Thanks everyone for sharing!

Last week I launched my 2007 Christmas Boutique, a virtual “store” where my family members (all 19 of them) could select their own Christmas gifts from the goods I had been making all year. As I said in my email to them all, “There’s nothing worse for a handcrafter than to give a gift that the recipient doesn’t want or like. It’s bad enough to do that with a bought gift, but even worse, in my opinion, to spend hours making something that is a ‘miss’ rather than a ‘hit’. It’s embarrassing for everyone.”

Here’s how it worked. I gave them a url to go to, where they could browse through the photos and leave comments under any that appealed to them. I encouraged them to select more than one, and to feel free to pick any that others had already selected. This was not a ‘first come, first served’ scenario. I reserved the right to make the final decision, and figured I could make whip up another one or two items if any were particularly popular.

My goal was to (a) give people something they really wanted (b) learn more about my loved ones’ preferences; after all, it’s been 10 years since I lived in Australia and spent any meaningful time with them; some of them weren’t even born when I left.

Well, my family embraced the idea with enthusiasm (whew!), and promptly cast their votes. There were a few surprises.

Children and grownups alike clamoured for the locked boxes, so I’ll be scouring the op shops over the next few days for more wooden boxes suitable for this purpose. I’ve started knitting another beanie (index finger stuck awkwardly up in the air) and I’ll try to make another couple of stupid sock creatures.

Nobody was interested in the batik placemats, which is fine, because I love them.

All in all, I am really happy with the response, and hope that my idea has reduced a little Christmas angst. Other handcrafters out there might like to try it!

Growing up, we always decorated the Christmas tree together- all of us kids helped every year. My husband doesn’t seem to have the time for this, so my daughter and I do it together- this year was great because she is nearly 4 and really old enough to handle the plastic ornaments atleast!

The three of us drive around and look at lights a night or two around Christmas. Stopping at Starbucks for hot cocoa first, of course!

This year, I am making us all new pajamas that we will open and wear on Christmas eve. One pair down, two to go!

We watched The Polar Express together last night. I also bought Charlie Brown Christmas and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas for us to enjoy togther snuggled on the couch in the weeks to come.

This weekend we will be helping my husband hang lights outside- I always helped as a kid (got shocked a couple times too!).

A week or so before Christmas I always make lots of candy and cookies to hand out to friends, family, and neighbors: fudge, caramels, sugar cookies, toffee, etc. I helped my mom do this as a kid too.

I have a list of about 30 different Christmas crafts that we are going to be making this month- most of them very kid friendly!

I have posted about a year long tradition we have for Thanksgiving:http://thelittleredhen.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/11/thankful-jar.html
It would be good to start this now and be ready for next year.
We enjoy doing this as it makes us pause during the year to make note of things. Also, this tends to slow the fast pace of eating a meal that takes so long to prepare. We remember and talk about things large and small that happened during the past year.

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Meet Kristin + Beth

We always travel with handmade bags. We have vintage embroidery framed on our walls, piles of fabric next to the sewing machine and more WIPs than we'll ever finish. We love the history, craft and artistry of sewing. Read More

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